Learning the English language could sometimes feel like the ultimate quest to conquer an immeasurable mountain. Laden with hurdles that might seem insurmountable, it's an arduous journey for anyone. While many lament the idiosyncrasies of English spelling, grammar and pronunciation rules, secretly wishing that everything could be less taxing or puzzling, the real issue here is how we approach the challenge itself.
The exam-driven and results-focused education system has been spoiling us all along with the well-intentioned but flawed idea that one could master the language simply by taking English classes. Some even believe the gap could be bridged rather quickly and effortlessly. To make matters worse, it's incredibly tempting to just learn the basics that could help fulfill a short-term goal.
The truth is, we can never pick up a new language without living and breathing it, developing our skills through assimilation and accommodation. Unless we set aside some time to practice what we have learned, spending 2 hours in class every week will not make a sizable difference. No matter how much information we take in, the language will only become an inherent part of us if we use it as much as we can. The key, therefore, is to explore and experience English in everyday situations rather than treat it as just another subject in school.
That's something I was fortunate enough to realize from the very beginning. But it did take me quite a while to get there...
"Never measure the height of a mountain
until you have reached the top."
—Dag Hammarskjöld
(Image by Jason Hogan from Unsplash)
Despite studying in a multilingual environment, the initial connection I had with the language was one of fear and detachment. Lacking any desire to turn that around, I'd just wing it on most occasions and somehow scrape through unscathed.
Well okay, I barely survived those out-of-the-blue oral tests—stuttering and stumbling my way through the seven seas of shudders and shivers, if you know what I mean. Still, the whole picture could've been much gloomier and doomier.
So for years my English floated like a feather, searching vainly for a direction. Or perhaps waiting for gusts and eddies to whirl itself into oblivion. No one really knew where it was heading.
And then, out of nowhere, came the moment of truth that changed its course—and ultimately my destiny.
"It is better to light a candle
than curse the darkness."
—Eleanor Roosevelt
(Image by Jan Wardenbach from Pixabay)
It was supposed to be one of those English classes where I would turn on my flight mode at the first minute and then go through the motions. But fate, as always, had other ideas...
Called to read out a seemingly harmless and docile passage, I stood up with my eyes glued to the innocent-looking text—without having the slightest clue to the calamity that would slowly unfold.
It didn't take me long, though, to realize the countless "banana skins" littered throughout the page. Struggling to keep my nerves at bay, I wobbled through the minefield that seemed to pounce on every hint of uncertainty in what I'd got to say. As mistakes began piling up, my confidence started crumbling down like a house of cards.
God, how I wished someone could just step in and stop the train wreck right away.
With my mind racing toward the imminent outcome, it was clear something had to give. And soon enough the breaking point did eventually arrive, with the word "stunned" bringing the phonetic implosion to a screeching halt.
Within seconds silence swept over the class, anticipating my next move.
"Should I go for 'stən' or 'stün'?"
Sensing that "stən" would be the safer bet, I took a deep breath, ready to read it aloud. But just before I got my tongue around it, for some inexplicable reason, I changed my mind in the last second and went the other way.
Oh, my.
Roars of laughter rippled across the room as the sudden blush of embarrassment blazed through my skin with little hesitation. It felt as if the entire world had just caved in on me.
Shell-shocked, Ms. Malini herself could only look on with dismay. Once the commotion simmered down, she voiced out her concern and stressed the need for immediate improvement. A little stunned, I could only nod in despair...
"The man who moves a mountain
begins by carrying away small stones."
―Confucius
(Image by Quang Nguyen Vinh from Pexels)
Whenever we strive to attain something important to us, we tend to let the more realistic target dictate our approach. In a less-than-ideal world overwhelmed with constraints, the realist in many of us loves to argue that doing so saves time and keeps us on the right track. The downside, nevertheless, is one we don’t often realize: the risk of missing an opportunity to achieve something even bigger and better.
So instead of turning to my electronic dictionary for some temporary relief or studying like crazy for the next test, I went for the jugular.
Intent on doing everything I could to learn the language from scratch, I was determined to roll up my sleeves and slog through the mud from day one―knowing that the temptation to procrastinate would always be lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike.
And miraculously, I somehow managed to figure out those “small stones” on my own.
It had to be my grammar for a start. A couple of locally published workbooks swiftly became my personal trainer in the months that followed. I had absolutely no idea how Delta managed to squeeze 1,001 questions into each volume—not that the number mattered as nothing could dissuade me from giving it a real go. With the newfound zest going into overdrive, so to speak, I soldiered through one exercise after another.
Sometimes perseverance, rather than flair and flamboyance, is all we need to succeed—a point heroically hammered home by the late Jin Yong in his beloved and widely revered wuxia masterpiece, The Legend of the Condor Heroes. Guo Jing, slow-witted and supposedly bereft of the innate talent to cut it against those considered far superior to him, has to buckle down and train relentlessly before clawing his way to the highest echelons of the cutthroat martial arts world.
Honestly I couldn't recall how much ground I eventually made up. One thing is for sure, though, that set the stage for everything else to fall into place.
"Genius is one percent inspiration,
ninety-nine percent perspiration."
―Thomas Edison
(Image by Petr Ruzicka from Unsplash)
Laying the foundations was only the first step on the stairway. With that in full flight, the focus could now turn to mastering the four language skills.
The Internet had arrived in Malaysia by then but access was still very much a luxury. So, I had no choice but to do it the old-fashioned way: googling from within.
One of the more unorthodox measures was forcing my schoolmates to speak with me in English. It must have annoyed the hell out of them, I guess. Imagine how frustrating the conversation could get since it would take me an eternity just to utter a word or two.
Well, showing the courage to express ourselves in an unfamiliar language is one thing; finding the words to do so is quite rightly another.
Despite efforts to ride the tide with all my might, the paucity of my vocabulary was starting to really bite. It was virtually yelling for bigger and bolder ammo to ease my plight.
While many would've taken the easy way out by scanning the dictionary for some quick antidote, I always knew that wouldn't do the trick. It would be rather pointless to memorize those words or phrases without learning how to combine them to form proper sentences in different contexts.
Leisure reading, on the other hand, would fit the bill perfectly. When reading purely for pleasure—focusing on the story rather than the language—one could pick up the vocabulary and the different ways of using it, all at once.
Fortunately, reading was something I had always enjoyed so convincing myself to head to the library for my first taste of some English storybook was a breeze. Getting used to reading everything in English, though, turned out to be an entirely different beast.
Taking on The Mystery of the Aztec Warrior, for example, was such a grind—thanks to the unprecedented number of words jostling for my attention. What started out as a casual read soon became something excruciatingly intensive. But I trudged on nonetheless, gobbling up every opportunity to feed my burgeoning vocabulary.
"You don't have to see the whole staircase;
just take the first step."
—Martin Luther King Jr.
(Image by Won Young Park from Unsplash)
The task of developing my listening skills seemed like the simplest one on the plate, at first. Hogging the settee and the TV all day long would be a schoolboy's dream (at least in my era). Watching Michael Jordan and the Bulls in action, for instance, was a real treat for basketball fans growing up in the 90s. So I thought I could just crank up the volume and make the grand breakthrough in a matter of weeks.
How unrealistically optimistic that would prove to be. Regardless of how hard I tried, I still couldn't catch a single thing spoken on screen.
Time was thankfully on my side though. And coincidentally, my passion for Liverpool FC was just about ready to literally shoot through the roof. With the live telecast of Premier League matches sneaking into the living room and soon becoming a familiar sight—due to the emergence of Mega TV and then Astro—the 90 plus minutes of commentary on each game, though delivered with a heavy British English accent, offered me the perfect platform to fine-tune my listening comprehension.
The timing just couldn't be better. Somewhere along the 15 hundred hours' worth of practice I'd later clock up, it all began to click.
Writing, as expected, posed a completely different challenge.
Without the know-how to write an essay that wouldn't make the teacher pull their hair out, let alone come up with something presentable, I was adamant from the off that my writing might have to endure numerous painful rewrites before it could even start to see daylight. Like it or not, the bashful side of me would have to embrace the uncomfortable idea of asking around for a second opinion on those little creations of mine.
But mobility was still a rarity back then. With no Facebook or WhatsApp―and no MSN Messenger either―my poor house phone had to quietly put up with all those extra shifts week in, week out. Reading sentences after sentences to the receiver, I'd keep probing every single line with the keenest scrutiny, practically leaving no stone unturned in a maddening quest to steady the ship. Unimaginative but effective, for a good while that was my "go-to-Google" in casting aside any niggling doubts wriggling into my writing.
"Start by doing what's necessary;
then do what's possible;
and suddenly you are doing the impossible."
—Saint Francis of Assisi
(Image by Nick Bondarev from Pexels)
Within a year or so my exploits had gradually taken me from the lower reaches of the mountain to the base camp. Learning a language is like climbing, remember?
As complete as the transformation might seem, somehow it didn't feel like the end of the journey at all. If anything, getting there way ahead of schedule had merely given me a world of confidence to march on and conquer the summit.
Looking back on the turning point that changed everything, that kid could've easily flinched from doing what the situation called for. Kudos to him for having the guts to tough it out.
But the most obvious takeaway for me is, how far we could sometimes go if we start out by doing what's necessary—an idea various works of fiction have touched on over the years. Take, for example, the classic Dragon Ball manga expertly written and beautifully illustrated by Akira Toriyama. The do-what-is-necessary spirit is best exemplified by the main hero, Goku.
Faced with the prospects of fighting a formidable foe in Frieza, the story's ultimate villain, Goku knows he has to up his powers drastically to even stand a chance. Training day and night in the gravity chamber en route to Planet Namek, he channels all his energy into strengthening those fundamentals—without really putting a ceiling on himself. By doing what's necessary, he goes on to redefine what's technically possible and scale the heights previously thought impossible.
"Nobody's ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I'm still standing, I'm gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren't just
another bum from the neighborhood."
—Rocky
The same can be said for Rocky, the title character of the 1976 sleeper hit. If he goes into the bout against Creed fearing the probable outcome or thinking of nicking an improbable win, he may not have lasted the full 15 rounds. By doing what's necessary, with unrelenting resolve, he eventually earns the kind of victory that each of us silently yearns for—proving himself to his doubters that he is no loser.
Though the fictional depiction of such personal triumphs might be too dramatic to strike a chord with everyone, the themes it usually conveys are remarkably relevant. The question that begs to be answered is, what does it really take to truly get over the line?
In the absence of the right circumstances, talent is just another form of potential―latent and unproven. We need to either create the environment for the talent to thrive or improvise and adapt in order to make better use of the potential. But no matter which way we end up going, it’s always the grit to fight on that keeps us moving in the right direction.
21 years on, the story of how I overcame the odds in mastering the English language is still pretty much the epitome of that. With the Englishire project up and running, the opportunity is finally here to help others create a similar chapter.
That, to me, is the very least I could do for the language that has given me so much.